Since its founding in 2006, Leboncoin has become one of the darlings of the French. With more than 300 million monthly visits and more than 20 million active users in 2022, it sits among the most popular sites in France.
However, the interface was seriously starting to age; but the development teams worked hard to offer a much more modern and user-friendly one (which is reminiscent of Amazon’s). All it needed was one additional turn to negotiate to further improve the user experience: a Google Lens-style search mode.
AI: a new eye for your research
Visual recognition stands out as the flagship innovation of this AI overhaul. It is now possible to photograph a coveted item: the algorithm will then instantly analyze the image to present similar ads.
This feature, available across the entire catalog offered by the site – from everyday consumer goods to vehicles – will greatly facilitate the search for items.
In some cases, it is true that finding an item could prove to be more tedious than expected: profusion of similar objects, variable quality of the ads (blurry photos, incomprehensible descriptions or potential scams), sometimes imprecise filters, etc. It is now possible to save time using Leboncoin’s visual search tool similar to Google in Lens.
How to use the famous visual search?
Go to the Leboncoin mobile application and Locate the small camera icon to the right of the main search barwhich adopts Google Lens codes. After pressing the icon, two possibilities are offered to you: either take a live photo or import an image from your gallery. Artificial intelligence then takes care of the rest by analyzing your image and finding similar ads in seconds.
For optimal results, favor photos of unique objects, with a contrasting and well-lit background. Note that for the moment, this functionality focuses on three universes: home, garden and fashion. If the suggestions don’t match your search exactly the first time, the AI continues to improve with each use, often offering alternatives. Antoine Jouteau, director of Leboncoin, notes: “To increasingly meet the needs of our consumers, our technical teams – which represent more than 600 employees out of 1,500 – develop functionalities every day, in particular thanks to AI”.
